Jenson again, a propos of impassibility, but with wider application: “The temptation that regularly besets us is fundamentalist longing to think that this conversation has come to a satisfactory rest at some point in the past, whether with the Fathers or Thomas or Luther or Barth or whomever, so that we are dispensed form its labors. Pointing out that this is indeed a temptation should not be regarded as an attack on the tradition; for – as especially much Catholic theology has recently insisted – the tradition is fundamentally the continuing enterprise itself, encompassing but never identical with its achievements to date.”
All contributions “must be partial and incomplete, including those of the Fathers or Thomas or whomever; and to suppose that any of them provides a Sabbath rest leads to ideology, not theology.”
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